He picked out a large, deep crater; perhaps it was Tycho.

There was an elusive quality to the Moon’s features, an uncertainty about the shading. Sometimes the craters looked like domes, the mountains like pits. The dead surface of the Moon was like a mask, reversing itself in his vision.

In Earth orbit Dana had been able to see the curve of the horizon, but the Earth was so huge that most of it was out of his view. But the Moon was a small world. The curvature was so tight he could extrapolate the rest of the sphere; he could see that he really was flying around a ball of rock, suspended in space, with darkness stretching to infinity in all directions.

It looks so alien This isn’t our world And yet three Stars and Stripes and three abandoned LM descent stages already stood on those silent hills.

“Thirty seconds to LOS,” Jones said.

“Enterprise, Houston.” Ralph Gershon was the rookie astronaut serving as capcom today. “Coming up on LOS. All your systems are looking good. We’ll see you on the other side.”

“Roger, Ralph, thank you. Everything looks okay up here.”

The hiss of static from the comms units faded suddenly, to be replaced by a low-volume hiss.

“Going around the corner,” Phil Stone said quietly. “Loss of signal.”

Dana stared at the little loudspeaker grille closest to his position. He was startled by his own reaction: he felt abandoned, bewildered. Apollo was out of the line of sight of Earth for the first time since launch; for the first time, Mission Control couldn’t get in touch with the crew, and it was as if a rope had been cut.

Dana quietly suspected that a kind of dependency culture had grown up among the astronauts over the years. Whether it was healthy or not, the knowledge that Mission Control was always there, always staffed with the best and the brightest, took a lot of the responsibility away from the pilots. It was as if Houston was flying your ship for you. By contrast, those few moments when you and your bird would have to function entirely independently of the ground — well, those times brought fear. Not of the inherent danger, but of failure. Don’t let me be the one who screws up.

The stack was barreling toward the Moon. They were falling steeply into the satellite’s gravity well, and the Moon was growing — getting visibly larger by the minute, its features sliding past the windows.

“Look at that old Moon,” Jones said. “Rougher than the surface of my butt. Well, I guess I’m never going to get to land down there, but I’m glad I came along after all. That smart-ass kid Gershon should be here now. Make him feel right at home. It’s just like Cambodia.” He cackled.

Dana tried to grin along with his commander, but he failed. To his left, Phil Stone looked uncomfortable, too.

This jock banter crap just wasn’t appropriate anymore, Dana thought. Maybe it never had been.

The craft fell into lunar shadow and entered total darkness: no sunlight, no Earthlight touched the hidden landscape rushing below.

The radio remained silent.

We’re alone, the three of us All of humanity, imprisoned on the Earth, is hidden by the bulk of the Moon.

Dana felt a sudden surge of conviction. However it was arrived at, we made the right decision, to continue the space program How could we have turned our backs on adventures like this? We have to keep on going out. Experiences like this will change us We’ll become something more something beyond the human.

The broken, complex lands scrolled beneath his window.

“Okay, you assholes, enough rubbernecking,” Jones said. “Let’s get in shape for this fucking burn.”

Enterprise sailed around the limb of the Moon.

Mike Conlig hated Washington. As soon as he got off the plane the steamy, oppressive heat closed in around him, and he felt a kind of psychic pressure from all the people crowded into this shabby corner of the Earth.

Now, along with Hans Udet and Bert Seger, he sat in Tim Josephson’s immense, plush office. Conlig felt awkward, out of place, lost in the huge room, in the great, soft armchair. And he wasn’t so keen on wearing a suit either; the knot of his tie seemed to be compressing his throat.

Tim Josephson came bustling into the room, a file under his arm. He slid behind his modest, polished desk. “I’ll come straight to the point,” Josephson said. “I’ve read your status reports. You know the question you have to answer here today. NERVA is a hell of a long way behind schedule. The Critical Design Review is scheduled in three months. And from what I hear you’re not going to be ready.”

Seger shrugged. “You won’t hear any argument about that, Tim.”

Josephson steepled his fingers. “All right. We’re under a lot of pressure on this; we’re having to defend your work against attack in Congress and elsewhere. People are saying that we’ve put our shirts on the wrong horse here. Nuke rockets are a new development; maybe we should be following an incremental process of change, by enhancing our chemical technology. And on top of that you have the nuclear safety lobby, who say we shouldn’t be throwing up tons of radioactive fuel on top of Saturn rockets.” He looked at them, one by one. “I suppose you have read about the Seabrook protest, up in New Hampshire: two thousand people demonstrating, trying to stop the construction of the fission plant there. By using nuclear technology we’re swimming against the tide, gentlemen.

“But it’s clear to me that we can’t let the problems on this one development stop the whole goddamn program. You know that since 1972 Rockwell has been carrying through a parallel chemical-technology development, based on an S-II enhancement. Fred Michaels is thinking of going to Congress to ask for funding to be switched away from NERVA to that development stream…”

Hans Udet shook his head; his blond-gray hair shone in the fluorescents. “No. You must understand—”

Josephson leaned forward. “No. Today, you must listen, and understand, Hans. This isn’t a game we’re playing, here. It takes a hell of a lot of effort to build and sustain a political coalition behind a program like ours. Jim Webb did it for NASA in the 1960s; we’re lucky to have Fred Michaels in the same role now. But he can’t work miracles…”

It was the first time Conlig had met Josephson in the flesh. The assistant administrator gave off the aura of sleek, bureaucratic competence, which came over on TV. Every inch the organization man. In his early forties, and with that small face perched on a long neck, that prematurely high forehead, the thick spectacles, and those rapid, decisive movements, Josephson was like some tall, flightless bird.

But his dry words connected with Conlig; suddenly it was an intense, electric moment for him. My God. He’s serious. We’re in real trouble here, it’s genuinely possible that these bastards could close us down. And you can bet your life that if they do, none of us working on NERVA would be allowed within a thousand miles of whatever new program they turn to. Conlig’s whole career — everything, all his self-belief — funneled through that one moment in time, that decision point. If I say the wrong thing now, my professional life will be over. Because there will never be another NERVA project; not for me.

“Now.” Josephson had finished his preamble. He swiveled his head and stared at each of them. “Sum up. I want you to tell me where you are, and what your prospects for success are. I want the truth as you see it; this isn’t the moment for false pride. The whole program depends on us making the right decision.” He glared at Udet. “How about you first, Hans?”

The old German sat up straight in his chair. “The truth, Tim? The truth, as you can tell from the reports, is that NERVA, at this stage of its development, is in trouble. We haven’t been able to sustain a single worthwhile burn yet…” In his clipped, accented, slightly imprecise English, with its bizarre overlay of Alabama drawl, Udet began to go through NERVA’s myriad problems — pump stresses, nozzle hot spots — and the steps the teams were taking to resolve them.